Latest / Conservation Stories / Rain Bees: Rethinking Water, Wells, and Rainwater Harvesting with Larry Sunn

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Rain Bees: Rethinking Water, Wells, and Rainwater Harvesting with Larry Sunn · Conservation Stories

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign.
• 0:10
  Speaker B: Sims here again, back for another episode of Conservation Stories. Conservation Stories is a podcast brought to you by the Sand Hill Area Research Association. And you know, we talk about water a lot and we talk about drought a lot. One conversation we haven't had until today is rainwater harvesting. Larry sun, thank you for joining us today from your 37 sided house.
• 0:39
  Speaker A: Yes,
• 0:41
  Speaker B: in the background. So give us a little bit, tell us a little bit about Larry.
• 0:47
  Speaker A: Well, right now I am a retired marine and a retired university professor and I work work as a consultant with an organization or a group called Rain Bees. And what our focus is is trying to get people to be able to understand rain harvesting. Kind of like if I say it's a well, well everybody knows that. But when you go into rain harvesting, it's kind of out there a little bit. So what we try to do is we try to just inform the public about rain harvesting, how to go about doing it and the things that you can do with it once you have the gather the water. And when we started we thought we would be what I'm going to call the three Bs. And in effect what we thought we wanted to deal with bankers, builders and beneficiaries. And the idea was can we get the bankers to roll in the cost of a rain harvesting system into a mortgage like you would do a well, can we get them to underwrite a second trust deed in order to have a water capture system? And with the builders, we wanted to get them to try to suggest to their clients that grain harvesting was an option instead of drilling a well. And here in Comal county you must have five acres or more to do that. And but we also wanted them to reduce their requirements for grass. Like when they build a structure, they require a certain amount of grass. Well, if we can get them to reduce that because we're in the semi arid area as you all are, then we can save water. And then the third one was the beneficiaries to try to get the beneficiaries to kind of get a paradigm shift from drilling a well to going to rain harvesting as their source of water, certainly reduce their grass and maybe do more native plant xeriscaping kind of thing and then try to get them to work with their HOA to reduce some of the percentages because some of the HOAs here would require a vast amount of grass. So we started this, the Rain Bees. We wanted to be three bees and those were the bees. But I couldn't get that website being the Rain Bees. And we do three things One, we make various presentations on rain harvesting, drip irrigation, rain barrels, wicking containers, and so on. We deliver those classes to the master gardeners and master naturalists. In about 11 counties in and around where we are, we have a rain harvesting site that is a 50,000 gallon potable water tank that we collect water off of 6,000 square feet of roof. And then we have on the same Property, we have two 5,000 gallon tanks that are used for garden purposes for people who have gardening, and in this case, a very big garden. And then the other thing that we do, the third thing, is that we go to people's homes here in our area in order to help them to design their system. Now, what makes us qualified to do that is I served on the board of the Kamel Trinity Groundwater Conservation District for eight years, and we found that the Trinity aquifer under us was reducing so rapidly that we needed to get people to have an alternative. And so that's how we started rain bees. We also had. What we would like to do is we would like to have other groups in other jurisdictions who are doing the same thing. Basically people who know about rain harvesting, going to people's homes in order to help them. And so we do that for free because we are the outreach program for the Kamel Trinity Groundwater Conservation District and Kamel Gardeners.
• 4:45
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 4:46
  Speaker A: So our work in it has to do with that portion of rain harvesting. You all get about 19 inches of rain per year. Where you are here, we get about 30 inches of rain per year. And so it becomes more and more critical as we look at the drawdowns in the aquifers here. Our drawdown is very, very strong, very big. In your area, the drawdown is about 6 inches per year, which is a lot. You're taking out about 7 inches per year, but you are replacing it with the rain that you get there at only about a half an inch. And so you're losing a tremendous amount.
• 5:29
  Speaker B: Tremendous amount, yes.
• 5:31
  Speaker A: So our focus is, can we get other areas, people in other areas to do the same thing that we're doing?
• 5:39
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 5:39
  Speaker A: In that light, we have a lot of information on our website and I. And I'm rainbees.com as you already know.
• 5:46
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 5:47
  Speaker A: And people are welcome to go there and we will share any of that information to try to help them. So our focus is just to try to get people to just get a paradigm shift. Let's shift away from a. Well, let's shift away from green grass and go to rain harvesting.
• 6:05
  Speaker B: Yeah. And I know that there are subdivisions south of Lubbock that, you know, people built, you know, beautiful homes out there that they're, they're hauling water in.
• 6:14
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 6:15
  Speaker B: Because there's no, there's no water, you
• 6:17
  Speaker A: know, you know, when we talk about rain harvesting, sometimes the biggest question that we get, whenever we go to some places, somebody's home, the first thing that we ask is, what do you want to use the water for? And then the second question is, after you determine that, what is the demand that you have on your water supply? Because then that allows us to be able to help them decide on a tank size. So here's an example. Somebody has, let's say, a 4,000 square foot roof area. And let's say that it includes the garage. Whenever they talk about 4,000 square feet, they're talking about the concrete part that is air conditioned. But if we add the garage to that, now we have, let's say, 4,000 square feet. But there's also an overhang on the roof that is two feet all the way around the house with water. So we have to add 20%. So in that case, we would take our 4,000 square feet, multiply by 1.2, and we get 4,800 square feet. So now what we want to know is, in one inch of rain, how much water can we collect? 0.62 is the magic number. And you can remember that because that's the year I graduated high school, how easy that is.
• 7:34
  Speaker B: It's so simple.
• 7:36
  Speaker A: But let's, for sake of an easier number.
• 7:40
  Speaker B: Point. Six.
• 7:41
  Speaker A: Yeah. Let's take 4,000 square feet, and if we multiply that times 0.6, well, we're going to get 2,400 gallons of water in one inch of rainfall. And you all get the majority of your rain in from May, June and July.
• 7:56
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 7:57
  Speaker A: So if you had, let's say a three inch rainfall, well, now you're going to get three times that. Insert in terms of that very short time period, the calculation is you get 0.62 of a gallon for every square foot of roof space that you have. So 4000 square feet is going to give you 2400 gallons of water. You can say 2500. Three inches of rain is going to give you 7000, actually 8000 gallons of water. That's a tremendous amount of water.
• 8:31
  Speaker B: Yeah. So help us visualize for a home and just say that same home. And there's four people, there's a family, two kids living in that home.
• 8:48
  Speaker A: How much water do I have? What's my demand?
• 8:50
  Speaker B: What's my demand?
• 8:52
  Speaker A: And so the Easy way of calculating that is that we use 50 gallons per day per person inside of our home. This is not anything outside, it's everything inside. Inside that would be the washing machine, the showers, the clothes, all of that dishwasher. So 50 gallons per day. So if we have, let's say four people in the home, that then we multiply that times 50, which is going to give us 200 gallons per day. So since we're getting 200 gallons per day, we multiply that times 30 for 30 days and in a month we need 6,000 gallons. So a family of four is going to use 6,000 gallons per month?
• 9:33
  Speaker B: Per month.
• 9:34
  Speaker A: Now the next question is, how big a tank do I need to support that? So the way you calculate that is that in Texas we had the big droughts of 1940 and 1950, the early 10 year drought. During that period we had one time when there were 87 days in succession where we got no rain whatsoever. But what we as rain bees do is we recommend that you have a three month supply. So if your demand is going to be 6,000 gallons, multiply that times three, it's 18,000 gallons that you want to keep in a supply. So it's kind of like a savings account. Right. Put that water into a tank. So we would suggest to them you need a 20,000 gallon tank. And a 20,000 gallon tank installed here in the hill country area is going to cost somewhere in the area of about 30,000 to $40,000, depending upon how far away the tank is from the structure. Because then you have trenching and piping and that's.
• 10:36
  Speaker B: Oh sure, sure, yeah.
• 10:38
  Speaker A: So if the tank is close to the house, then you have what we call a dry system. So the water comes off the roof and goes directly into the top of the tank. And when it stops raining, the pipe gets dry. In a wet system, the tank is far away from the home. And let's say that the tank is 100ft away. So now the water goes down the downspouts and then it goes underground into the tank, pops up and then drops in the tank. And the difference between where the rain gutter is and the top of the tank needs to be a difference of about three feet. And if we have that three feet, then the water that falls in here automatically comes out over here on this end and you don't need to pump it. Then what happens is in a wet system because we have freezing temperatures from time to time. If you think about it for just a second, this is full of water and on the house that's full of water and so was the other pipes. And so you have to have a low point clean out to be able to let the water out so that in freezing temperatures have broken pipes above the ground in the dry system. You don't need that.
• 11:48
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's so interesting. So do you have like, if so just say I wanted to do this in my house, at my house and we're going to fit in this 2000, 2000 gallon tank. Is that what you said?
• 12:02
  Speaker A: Yeah. And let's say we're going to pretend
• 12:04
  Speaker B: I have that $4,000, 4,000 square foot house. This is my house. So are there like cities that are like, you can't put that thing in your yard?
• 12:17
  Speaker A: Number one, the state of Texas has promotes rain harvesting to the point where they have made it a law that an HOA or a city cannot stop you from collecting rain. But what this, what the HOA can do is they can have like a register, a regulation that says it has to be out of view from the street. So therefore people put them behind their home slope away. They put it behind. Now some HOAs promote it. And I in and tiller. I am absolutely positive that the day is going to come when having a rain harvesting system in your front yard is going to be equivalent to having a Maserati parked in your driveway. Because I'm.
• 13:03
  Speaker B: Yes, I, I'm so hearing you. Like, I know that Lacey, the founder of our organization, she and I heard like the first real lesson on not just rain catchment, but also like stormwater catchment. Like where they do, I think it's in Phoenix where they have curb cutouts. And so people are catching that for their yards, you know, and I, and I was like, we need to be doing this stuff. Like this is something we need to be thinking about and doing. And then I've, you know, thought about if I can get educated enough and maybe have like, you know, the, the, the type of partners that I might need, then maybe this is. And you know, something we could take to the West Texas Home Builders association and, and say how can we partner to, you know, when you're building homes like offer this.
• 13:50
  Speaker A: Yes. And those are called rain gardens, by the way, when they do that, where they divert the water into a little bit of a lowland area, they call those rain gardens. And they're very, very popular in any area where you have, let's say a swale that you can take and block some of the water, not all of it, but then you have this little pond that builds up and it does Two things. Number one, it will be absolutely beautiful if you put native plants in it. But secondarily, the water that's trapped sinks into the aquifer, and it feeds the aquifer in open land, like the land that you all have there around. Loving. You would have, let's say, if you have a low area, that low area can be your rain garden where it collects, let's say, maybe 12 inches of water in a heavy rain. And if it collects that in a low point area, kind of like a mini lake, then over the next three days, that water sinks into the aquifer and it then feeds the aquifer. Because here's the problem that we have. When water hits the ground in your aquifer and also in ours. You're the Ogallala aquifer. We are on the Trinity, but they are the same in terms of the density. And it takes, when it rains, only 4 to 5% of the water that hits the ground ever makes it. And then the second problem that we have is it takes two to three years for it to get to the pumpable state. And so that's why if you have a drought, you don't see the immediate effect of it in your aquifer and ours, simply because the water hasn't had the effect there yet. But two years down the road, all of a sudden starts to drop. So sometimes people feel like if we have rain today, well, that ought to be good for the aquifer. Well, it is two years from now, but not today, right?
• 15:47
  Speaker B: Yes, exactly. Yeah. Because it takes a while for it to get there. And I know, you know, we do a lot of work on talking about restoration, apply lakes, and you have one
• 15:57
  Speaker A: of the finest groundwater conservation districts in the entire nation. And I am absolutely serious. And they are also the first that was ever in. Yes, they were the only ones. And so it. And it covers a massive area. There's about 16 counties that are covered, five precincts. Yeah. And it is really a very fine aquifer. They have nearly 4,000 test wells throughout their jurisdiction, which covers all 16 counties. But that goes from below Lubbock, and I think it's Lynn county all the way up into Potter County, Amarillo.
• 16:35
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's huge. It is huge. And it was the first one. And I think, you know, that shows some forward thinking, you know, on the part of those people that went, we got to do something about this. You know, I think there's more things that we might be. We talk about all the time. What can we do? Water solutions. How do we, you know, hit the, the 20 year mark from now when they say there'll be no irrigation water left. Like, how do we hit it and not be going so fast? You know, how can we transition? But I, I think that this. I, I get concerned about how maybe little people are aware of. Of the water situation that hits us. I mean, Lacy and I are kind of like weird activists on this. I'll get an Uber. If we get in an Uber in Texas, we're going to talk to an Uber driver about water. Do you know? Because we just want to know, do people know? Dr. Just regular people know, you know, and one, One guy said, man, I heard, I heard about this, you know, you know, two months ago or whatever. And he said, I've been telling everybody gets in my Uber, you need to be worried about water. Do you know we're not gonna have water? Yeah, that's. That's the kind of, you know, it's like, hey, we have, like this. We don't have the kind of urgency about this that I think we should have. And if we can help people begin to make decisions before that feeling of urgency comes about. You know what I mean? But I think, you know, it'll take. I would love for us to have some kind of. And maybe there are some counties that are providing, like, tax credits for homes that put in water catchment systems.
• 18:11
  Speaker A: You know, there are some good credits. So the first one that I can tell you about is the state of Texas has no sales tax on anything used for rain harvesting, and that includes your rain gutters. So there's no sales tax on anything that would be like the piping or the pumping or the tank or the. Even the labor to get it there and back.
• 18:33
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 18:33
  Speaker A: So you can save the sales tax. There are some jurisdictions where the water company, usually not the city, but the water company has some sort of a rebate program. So here in our area, the city of New Braunfels has a $2,500 rebate to you, or credit, I should say, on your water bill if you're within the New Braunfels utilities jurisdiction.
• 18:57
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 18:58
  Speaker A: And so, but that's the only one that's close to us. San Antonio Saws does not have one. Yeah, we don't have one here in the greater area. Where I live is in the city.
• 19:08
  Speaker B: Well, and I would think that, I mean, that $30,000 could keep people from. I mean, that's something you definitely have to go. I'm gonna think about this. Do I really want to do this? Because that's a That's a lot of money.
• 19:19
  Speaker A: And that's why we had to, we went to the banks to make sure that the bank. The same thing.
• 19:25
  Speaker B: I can see that. So, so do you have kind of like, what's the economics of like, okay, so if I have my own water, I'm not paying the city for water. What are, what is the, you know, price of that? I mean, how long would it take for that $30,000 to be paid off?
• 19:46
  Speaker A: Well, it's, it's a matter of whatever the cost of the water is in that area. Let's say that somebody has a well and it's a functioning well. Well, if you do that, you're going to help the, the ecology of the area. But your payback is a long way down the road because when you have a rain harvesting system, you do have some maintenance things that you have to do, just like let's say farm equipment as an example. But as a general rule of thumb, when that well goes dry, then the cost is immediate. You have no water. And so now you have to haul water in. Somebody has to bring a truck of 2,000 gallons.
• 20:27
  Speaker B: Well, the other issue is, you know, is these water wells, as they decrease, I mean it's, it's expensive. The electricity is extensive. So to me I'm like, when you have this need for electricity that we have, you know, it seems like it might be in the best interest of some of these, like larger, like Excel and some of these places to say, hey, this is actually a way that you can save electricity. And if you save electricity, you know, we'll help invest in putting some of this in. You know, there's a way to, there's a way to like do some kind of public private thing.
• 21:07
  Speaker A: There's a difference in the electricity requirements for having a well versus having a rain harvesting system. So in a well system, typically that pump is, should take the water to the surface and it goes into tank and then from there you have a pressure pump that sends it to your house.
• 21:25
  Speaker B: Well, it's just getting it up and
• 21:27
  Speaker A: you say is what's in the ground, you see?
• 21:29
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 21:30
  Speaker A: So there's a savings that is going to be there. The biggest problem is if you. Sometimes I hear people say, well, you know, if you have a rain harvesting system in my neighbor's house, that decreases my home value. But wait a minute, what is your home value? If you don't have water right, then it becomes real.
• 21:51
  Speaker B: And so is it because they think they're unsightly, like, oh, that's ugly times.
• 21:56
  Speaker A: People will Think that. But they are beautiful tanks. They are.
• 21:58
  Speaker B: I was gonna say, I think you. I don't think that'd be a problem anymore, but I don't know. I guess it depends on what you pick.
• 22:05
  Speaker A: Yeah, but when we talk about the rain harvesting process, we, we in Texas, we have two problems that are serious problems in terms of the reduction of water. And the first is that we are a private property state. We want to take and say if I have a piece of ground, I should be able to do anything I want on it as long as I stay within health and safety rules. And so we are, we are. We're ready to defend that. The second thing we have in Texas is something that's called the rule of capture or the right of capture. And that means that if you have a piece of property, you own the water underneath it, it's yours, and you have a right to get it to the surface and you can do anything you want with it. Now, that said, in the upcoming legislation, there's going to be a change to that that says you can't sell it outside of your jurisdiction. Right? Now, technically, you can do that. I mean, theoretically, if I had, let's say, 200 acres, I could pump it to the surface and I could sell it. But that's going to change very soon. And groundwater conservation districts are very aware of that. And in the upcoming state legislature, there's going to be several different things that are going to happen to reduce that ability to do that. But said in the last legislature, one of the things that came about is that the state is allocating a billion dollars per. Per year for the next 20 years for money to be used for, I want to call it a series of water conservation issues. The main issue that they're doing is not rain harvesting, unfortunately for me, but what they're doing is allocating that money for infrastructure cost. Where you have cities like, let's say Houston or maybe even Lubbock, where the underground water system is so antiquated that it is leaking and they're losing 50% of the water that goes, that's a huge problem. A lot of that money is going to be earmarked for that infrastructure in the early parts. But then as we get further, I think you'll see the state that is going to evolve into us having more allocated terrain harvesting. The second thing that is going to be the focus is something called toilet attack. And that's basically when you take any water and treat it as one water, whether it's runoff water from the city streets or Whether it's sewage, we're going to treat that water, we're going to take and get it back into a drinkable state and put it right back into the system. And I want you to tell you that that is going to happen anywhere there is going to be a system that is the sewage treatment plant. If you get a sewage implant, it's going to be toilet tap someday.
• 24:57
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 24:57
  Speaker A: Right. Now, as I mentioned earlier, in here in Texas, we have Wichita Falls, we have the entire Permian Basin, we have El Paso. If you go into the California area, they're all there. Las Vegas has been on toilet for 40 years. And so that's coming. And you know, sometimes people, there's this yuck factor. But if you stop and think about it, the, the. When you have a water wastewater treatment plant, you have effluent that comes out of it. And that effluent people swim in, they boat in and people don't get sick from that. If you go eastbound out of Houston, there's a big lake on the east side of, of Houston that is a purely an effluent lake. People boat in it, they're fishing and they swim in it, and there's no problem with it. So I think one of the things that we need to do is inform people to not be afraid of effluent. Effluent, not a problem. And tap is coming whether you like it or not.
• 25:55
  Speaker B: Right. So I didn't realize there were so many with. So Witch Falls is the toilet tap.
• 26:00
  Speaker A: W Falls was the first one in Texas to lose their water. They literally ran out of. Out of water. And so they then started to look at their treatment plant.
• 26:10
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 26:11
  Speaker A: But before their treatment plant was in operation, El Paso installed their system.
• 26:17
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 26:17
  Speaker A: And then Wichita Falls and then the entire invasion. But it's on the books right now for Dallas Fort Worth, it's on the books for New Braunfels, San Antonio. The Saws folks, they're all doing toilet.
• 26:31
  Speaker B: Yep, it's coming. Yeah. That's so interesting. So we don't have much time left, but I want to, I want to talk. I want people to see your, your graphics. Like, show us what this looks like. You, you showed me a little bit of a. Some of your PowerPoint stuff and I think that's really interesting. Like, here's how this, here's how this functions and how it can, how people can. Because I remember when I first started hearing like in Austin that they're kept. They're catching ever. I mean like any evaporation, everything. And it's all going, you know, back to being recycled and reused. And I think that is fascinating. And this might help some of that what yuck factor for people to understand. This is the kind of filtration that you're talking about.
• 27:23
  Speaker A: Yeah. And this, the system that I'm going to show you. I'm going to show you two different elements. And this is the water that's coming out of the tank. We got. We have to catch it. Obviously it goes into a tank. And then do we need filtration when it comes to out of the tank? And so in this area, if we're using it for animals and for landscaping, then typically the process going to be there is basically the water comes from the tank and it's going to go through a pressure tank, which then keeps the pump from recycling too often. And then from there it's going to take and then go to your system for either garden or landscaping or whatever you happen to have there. And if you have just landscaping and just gardening, this is all you need. There's nothing else that's necessary. There's no other filtration that's necessary. So you only need the pump and pipes that's going to take it to where you want it. Now, if you have a drip irrigation system for your garden as an example, those little drippers are going to be needing to be filtered so they don't clog up. So therefore you might need a filter that you're going to use. And that filter that you're going to use just goes in line like that because you need 25 pounds of pressure for a drip irrigation system. But that's all you would need for a garden or even a small farm to be able to use the water that you would collect. The second application of it would be where you're going to use it for potable purposes. It's going to be your drinking water. And in this case, you're going to have the same pump and you're also going to have that same kind of tank that's going to be there. But then what happens after that? It goes through filtration into a system that looks like this. And these component parts you can get on a board cost about 1200-1500 dollars, depending on the size of that vehicle that's on the right hand side, which is a UV filter. And so the first thing about this is it has a couple of pressure gauges that tell you what the pressure is going in and the pressure is going out. And that tells you when it's time to change the filters, most part, you have to change those filters about once a quarter. Then you have. The first filter is a 20 micron filter. And the way to remember that is that if you pull out one hair from your head, the hair is 70 micron. So this is about a fourth of a hair. Then it goes from there to a 5 micron filter and then from there it goes to what we call a UV filter. And I'm going to move this over here. And it's not really a UV filter. It's not a filter at all. It doesn't filter anything out. It. It will take and render inert that are in there. So when a germ is hit by the light, then that germ is then unable to reproduce and therefore can't hurt us. It does not, it does not take it out. It only neutralizes it in terms of its ability to reproduce.
• 30:25
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 30:25
  Speaker A: Then after that, then what happens is your water is then going to go out to your house. And that's all you need for a filtration system. You need a pump, you need to have the pressure and then away you go with that filtration system. And that's a relatively easy. If you build that components by yourself, you can probably do it for about $800, but you can buy it already put together for reasonable fee. Now in that light, by the way, that's inside of that UV filter, that light must be replaced every year. And the cost of that is about $82. The cost of the filters that are in the two blue filters, those are going to take and run you about $19 each.
• 31:12
  Speaker B: So just minimal. It's nothing. Yeah. Wow. Okay.
• 31:16
  Speaker A: So that's the system that is there Now. I have a few other things in my system, but I don't think we need to take and talk about those. I think folks just need to know that the system is relatively simple. I like to say that it's complex, but it's not complicated. So the water goes in, water goes out. It's like that filter. The water goes in, the water out the last.
• 31:40
  Speaker B: Yeah. And it's interesting because so like we, we had a flood in our house and we had to remodel. We have concrete, you know, foundation, and so they now run. All of our incoming water is up in our attic and coming down. And I'm like, this would be just plug and play almost. You put your tank out there, you do that, it's like boom. You don't, you're not. You wouldn't have to dig anything up.
• 32:02
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 32:03
  Speaker B: You wouldn't be doing trenches or anything. You just stick your tank back there. Wow.
• 32:08
  Speaker A: And let's suppose that you had a well and now you want to take and collect the water off of your home, or you have water that's coming into your home from, let's say, a water purveyor. If that was the case, then just before the pump, where it says from tank, you'd have two valves. One valve from the well or the public water supply and one valve from your rain harvesting system. You just turn the valves and you're on one system versus the other. However, there's one important thing that folks need to realize. If you have a public water supply, you must get their permission to tap into their system. And then secondarily, you must have their own backflow device put onto that system. You cannot just take and put any backflow device, and it must be done by a master plumber. So you have two requirements. If you have a public water supply, one flow device approved by them, and then second, a master plumber who's going to install that. And that's to protect the public water supply.
• 33:13
  Speaker B: Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Actually, this is. So how this all works is just a series of gutters that are collecting, the water's flowing into, and then that's all flowing just off the roof and into the tank.
• 33:31
  Speaker A: Yep, that's exactly how it works. So on the end of your gutter, sometimes people will say, what are the various roof types that I have? Can I collect it off of, let's say a shingle roof or a metal roof. Any of those roofs will work. You would have a rain gutter, then a downspout that's going to go to the tank. But if you have different roofs, the only roof you cannot use for rain harvesting is a wood roof. Like the old wood shakes that were there years ago.
• 34:00
  Speaker B: Yes. Oh, yeah.
• 34:01
  Speaker A: However, if you have a roof that has asphalt shingles, the asphalt shingles should not be used for potable purposes for the first five to seven years because during that time, the chemicals leach out of the asphalt. So for potable water. But if you have a use of the water that is for landscaping or for animals, that's okay. The only thing that you have to do is wait five to seven years to be able to use it for purposes. But it.
• 34:33
  Speaker B: There's not as far as like, how much, how much water you catch, like metals. Not better than any other asphalt shingles or anything else. Because I always think like, metal roof is just like, seems like it wouldn't Catch as much. I don't know.
• 34:52
  Speaker A: Metal is the best of all of them. And so then the next would be something that's going to be like a slate or a, a concrete, sometimes concrete shingles if you will. Those are, are going to be the best. The best by far is the metal.
• 35:13
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's fascinating.
• 35:15
  Speaker A: Sometimes people have a difficulty calculating how much water I'm going to be able to get based upon like they think the pitch of the roof, but doesn't matter because rain falls directly straight down. And as it's falling directly straight down, it doesn't matter what the pitch of the roof is because it's still going straight. So the square footage of the bottom or actually the roof that makes the difference.
• 35:44
  Speaker B: That's so interesting. This has been fascinating and it really answered a lot of questions for me. Just, just trying to figure out understanding exactly, like what would you be asking someone to do? What kind of investment would that be? You know, and what I wonder is if you've seen like, like a builder saying we're going to put in this, this little neighborhood here and because we can buy everything in bulk and we can install it, when they put it in, then it'll only add and we'll give it to them at call at wholesale, you know, and so then they maybe can add that on for $15,000 or you know, considerably less.
• 36:27
  Speaker A: Well, here where we are, if I wanted to drill a 400 foot well, it's going to cost me about 60 to $65,000. But I can put in the rain harvesting system of a 30,000 gallon tank for $40,000. So when it comes to new construction or to replace a well, it's far cheaper to do rain harvesting and you're guaranteed water. You know, you drill a well, you can get a dry hole. Rain harvesting is really picking up dramatically here in our area, which is, we're about 30 miles north of San Antonio.
• 37:01
  Speaker B: Yeah, so is there, is it when you have. Let's just say for us, like really sometimes it's like it rained 12 inches this year, you know, or like where my husband and I lived out on the farm and it didn't rain for 18 months. We didn't get rain for 18 months. Oh my goodness, it was awful.
• 37:20
  Speaker A: You know, we are in a drought situation here also. But I can tell you this. I have a 50000 gallon water storage tank and if it rains tonight, any amount, my tank is going to overflow. It's full. And I have enough water in my tank from collecting it when it did Rain. In. In June and July of this year, we got seven inches of rain.
• 37:44
  Speaker B: That would be of last year. Let's let people think about that.
• 37:47
  Speaker A: That's like last year, this past year ago.
• 37:49
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 37:50
  Speaker A: Yep. And so we collected that water. And if I have no rain for the next 11 and a half months, I have water.
• 37:58
  Speaker B: Wow.
• 37:59
  Speaker A: It's a true. You know, people think of water as being raindrops instead of the volume that comes off of your home. And it's a tremendous amount of water. And Those calculations of 0.62 times square footage is going to give you a very good idea of how much water you can collect. And it's a lot.
• 38:16
  Speaker B: That's a lot. Wow. Wow. This has been so interesting. Well, we're going to have to cut it off right now, but I'd love to maybe have you back on again and maybe we can reschedule and just talk a little bit more about. I just find it interesting and I love to continue the conversation and maybe even more about how specifically you're partnering with people in areas and what you want to do to expand the reach that you have and that kind of thing.
• 38:45
  Speaker A: Yep. And I'll be glad to take put up some other slides that we have about the rain harvesting system. People think of it as being really complicated, but truly it's not complicated.
• 38:55
  Speaker B: No, I mean, even this, I'm like, that is so simple.
• 38:58
  Speaker A: Yep. It really is.
• 38:59
  Speaker B: Yeah. Well, thank you, Larry. I appreciate it so much.
• 39:03
  Speaker A: You are very welcome. And thank you for taking the time to ask us to be a part of this. You are welcome to share with folks email address and our phone number.
• 39:14
  Speaker B: We'll link all of that. It'll all be linked in the show notes.
• 39:17
  Speaker A: Yeah, I've consulted with people over the phone, even up into the Dallas Fort Worth area. So we're happy to do that.
• 39:25
  Speaker B: Okay. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. And thank you, friends for joining us for this episode of Conservation Stories. So rain bees. B E S Rain bees. Isn't that right?
• 39:37
  Speaker A: Yep, that's it.
• 39:38
  Speaker B: Rainbees.com rainbees.com okay. And we all look for all of it in the show notes. Thank you, Larry. I appreciate it.
• 39:45
  Speaker A: All right.